Public Meeting: Building a new party of working people

dublin | worker & community struggles and protests | event notice Monday November 28, 2005 18:06 by CIL

Campaign for an Independent Left

Campaign for an Independent Left
Building a new party of working people

Public meeting
It’s time for a real alternative

Campaign for an Independent Left
Building a new party of working people

Public meeting
It’s time for a real alternative
Speakers: Seamus Healy TD and Councillor Joan Collins
Teachers Club, Parnell Square, Dublin
Tuesday Dec 6th, 8.00pm

Over the last year a number of groups and individuals have engaged in a discussion about the need for a new left party in Ireland to represent working people. The groups involved to date have been the Tipperary Workers and Unemployed Group, The Community and Workers Action Group, the Irish Socialist Network, and those associated with Red Banner magazine.

In November these groups and a number of individuals came together to launch a campaign for a new party to represent and organise ordinary working people and their communities. Below is the founding resolution of the Campaign for an Independent Left. It sets out our aims and the main points we want to campaign on.

As this notice is being written SIPTU workers have occupied an Irish ferries vessel in Wales. The situation in Irish Ferries is but the tip of the iceberg in terms of the attack being waged on union jobs, wages and conditions. This is the real reality of the Celtic Tiger.

Ireland is now one of the richest and, at the same time, most unequal countries in the world. In this two-tier society, if you are an ordinary working person, you work harder with longer hours for less, you have poorer health and die younger, your children get poorer education. You face corruption and indifference at every turn.

We are reaching a point where the only people who have rights are those who can afford to buy them. But where is the alternative for working people? Labour are already in coalition with Fine Gael, whose leader engaged in the most cynical traveller bashing to gain votes over the Nally affair. What change can be expected from this quarter?

We say it’s time for us to build a real alternative. Come to the meeting, hear our ideas on what can be done, how it can be done, and how, if you are as pissed off as we are, you can get involved.

A key purpose of this meeting will be to establish a Dublin group of our campaign. Similar meetings will be held throughout the country in the New Year. Hope to see you there.


Founding resolution of the Campaign for an Independent Left:

Campaign for an Independent Left
Building a new party of working people

The individuals and groups involved in the Campaign for an Independent Left are united by the common aim of a radical transformation of Irish society. We are committed to the struggle to build a society where working people democratically control all aspects of their lives—social, economic, cultural and political—and where the gap between rich and poor is eliminated.

To help achieve this transformation, we believe it is necessary to develop a new independent all-Ireland party of working people. By independent we mean a party that we will oppose in real terms the right wing pro capital parties, north and south, and will under no circumstances enter into government with them.

This will be a grassroots campaigning party—broad, pluralist, democratic, and with no agenda other than advancing the interests of working people. We now commit ourselves to campaigning for such a party, winning over people active in the labour movement, community campaigns, and the various movements for social justice to get involved in making it a reality.

The following are the initial points of basic political agreement that have brought us together to begin this process.

· No coalition with parties of the right, under any circumstances.

· Public ownership and democratic control of the country’s resources and services, so that they can be developed in the interests of working people and our environment. An end to the privatisation or commercialisation of public services.

· A comprehensive universal public health-care system. An end to all state subsidies for private health care.

· A free, secular education system, aimed at the full and equal development of each human being from pre-school to university. An end to all state subsidies for private education

· The provision of housing as a basic right

· A public transport system based on the needs of users, not profit, and the protection of the environment.

· A progressive taxation system that will redistribute wealth, making the rich pay their fair share, and lifting the burden of stealth and double taxes from working people.

· No to so-called “social partnership”. We want trade unions run democratically by their members, and fighting for their interests. Repeal all restrictive legislation against union activity. Unite Irish and migrant workers by fighting for basic trade union rights and conditions for all workers.

· We believe in equality and solidarity between all working people—men and women, black and white, Travellers and settled people, Catholic and Protestant. We will offer 100 per cent opposition to all forms of racism, sexism and sectarianism.

· We are for an inclusive, multi-cultural society with equal rights for all; asylum seekers should have the right to work.; for an end to deportations.; full citizenship for all children born in Ireland; work permits to be issued to workers and not employers.

· A foreign policy based on opposition to imperialism, and solidarity with those fighting for democracy, justice and peace, the re establishment and maintenance of military neutrality, opposition to an EU dominated by big business and for a Europe of solidarity between working people.

We appeal to all individuals and groups who share our vision of a new party of working people to contact us and help build it in practice